The development of the semantic externalism in the 1970s was followed by a debate on the compatibility of externalism and self-knowledge. Boghossian’s memory argument is one of the most important arguments against the compatibilist view. However, some compatibilists attack Boghossian’s argument by pointing out that his understanding of memory is internalistic. Ludlow and others developed the externalist view of memory to defend the compatibility of externalism and self-knowledge. However, the externalist view of memory undermines the epistemic status of memory since (...) it gives memory a burden that is too heavy for it to carry. This paper argues that only if we take the content of memory to be narrow and take that of self-knowledge to be wide and replace Cartesian self-knowledge with contextually constrained self-knowledge, can the compatibility of externalism and self-knowledge be effectively defended. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of Chinese business managers’ moral philosophies on the perception of corrupt payments such as bribery, kickbacks and gift giving. Business managers from Mainland China were selected as target respondents. As hypothesized the survey results generally indicate that moral relativism is a significant predictor of Chinese business managers’ favorable perception of bribery and kickbacks. In examining the attitude toward gift giving, the survey showed that an individual’s attitude toward gift giving was neither affected by their moral (...) relativism nor by their moral idealism, which implies that gift giving is widely accepted as legal practice in business in Chinese cultural society. (shrink)

This paper investigates links between social capital and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The source of the primary data was 144 ‘Business Profiles’, written by the owner-managers of small businesses in application for a Small Business Awards competition in 2005. Included in each of these narratives were claims relating to the firms’ contributions to wider society, relationships with customers, employees and stakeholders. These narratives were coded and classified in a framework drawn (...) from Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s (1998, Academy of Management Review 23(2), 242–266) categorisation of social capital. The analysis revealed a range of strategic orientations towards the development of social and symbolic capital, along a conceptual continuum ranging from being responsible for oneself to being responsible for others. Overall, the evidence demonstrates the significance of the power inherent in the social relations of SMEs as a force for ethical behaviour, and suggests that normative theories of the development of social capital may provide ‘competitive advantage’ through responsible behaviour for small business in the global economy. (shrink)

“Entire philosophy, especially the basic important point of contemporary philosophy, is the connected point between logic and existence.” The top, basic and key point is logic and existence or spirit and matter. How to understand this point becomes the important symbol of different development stages and different philosophy schools, one’s essence of world outlook as well. Philosophy, which belongs to thinking field, pertains to “software system”, is the platform for scientific research of other subjects. Formula One, the universe is rooted (...) in matter, united in spirit; Formula Two, the universe is potential energy. Formula Three, the universe is function. Modernization is digital! Digital philosophy! Digital spirit world! (shrink)

It is the continuity between epistemology and empirical science that the naturalism in contemporary philosophy of science emphasizes. After its individual and social dimensions, the philosophy of scientific practice takes a stand on naturalism in order to observe complex scientific activities through practice. However, regarding the naturalism’s problem of normativity, the philosophy of scientific practice today has deconstructed more than it has constructed.

Western materialism and dialectics are different from their Chinese analogues. The informed perspective presented here may rouse a sensitivity to these differences in a tongbian reading of Marxist philosophy on the part of Chinese intellectuals; Marxism is no longer exactly what it is understood to be in the Western tradition. Ai Siqi's discussions of "materialism" and "the interpenetration of opposites" exemplify how Chinese Marxism draws on tongbian to read Marx and Engels in a distinctly different way. Little in Ai's thought (...) can be identifiable with Engels' law of unity of contradiction, where all motion consists of the interplay of attraction and repulsion, and the form of motion is what physics terms "energy." Following Hall and Ames on correlative thinking in the Chinese tradition, it is argued that certain Western cosmological assumptions have led to differences between Western Marxism and particular philosophical currents in the Chinese tradition, and that Chinese Marxism has developed from a culture and tradition that cannot be understood fully in terms of Western categories. (shrink)

This research explores how consumers respond to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in China with a multiproduct, comparative survey. Empirical results conclude that (1) Chinese consumers, who show a high level of awareness and trust of CSR, are more likely to transform a good CSR record into positive corporate evaluation, product association, and purchase intention; (2) Consumer responses to CSR vary across different product categories. Those firms selling experience products (vs. search and credence products) are more likely to gain consumers' positive (...) product associations and purchase support through CSR practices; and (3) The relationships between consumer demographics and their CSR responses are not linear, and those consumers with a middle level of age and income would respond to CSR more positively. Managerial implications are provided. (shrink)

During its evolution Chinese moral education has developed pronounced ideological aspects. This stems from traditions of first equating politics with morality, phrasing them both in the same language, and then of encouraging correct moral and political relations and behaviours through education. This trend dates back three thousand years to Zhou Gong and continued through Confucius and his followers. From 1949, through the Cultural Revolution and the present transition to a market economy, a similarly unified approach to political, ideological and moral (...) education has been effected through the organizational medium of deyu. As well as providing a historical overview, this paper examines the ideological function and political structure of deyu and the changes that are occurring within it. In the light of current changes in China, deyu is now starting to shift its focus away from ideological education and towards citizenship education. This reflects important changes in core values, to include individualism, economic initiative and consumerism, all of which confront Chinese society and education with distinct challenges and opportunities, and suggest even further reform of deyu during the 21st century. (shrink)

Experience and science, being the two sources of technology, have different focuses. In experiential technology, techniques and skills are emphasized while in scientific technology tool or equipment. Experiential technology is generally regarded as local knowledge, and scientific technology universal. Traditional Chinese medicine is an experiential technology. In contrast, Western medicine is set up as a scientific technology with great efforts. Through the comparison of these two medicines, this paper attempts to illustrate the difference between the two technologies and in turn, (...) the difference between these two medicines by defining these two technologies. Finally, this paper further investigates the special values of Chinese medicine. Making use of the SSK theory, this paper deconstructs the idea of universality of science, and argues that, the universality is the feature that science pursues, but not what it already has. With more historical evidence, experiential technology is more stable, while scientific technology is less stable because it updates quickly, and often changes reversely. (shrink)

Since the 16th National Congress of Communist Party of China (16th NCCPC) in 2002, more and more private entrepreneurs have appeared on the political arena in China. The article first describes the state of the phenomenon, and analyzes the reasons and the related ethical issues of private entrepreneurs participating in politics. For this purpose, the article begins by suggesting a framework of analyzing the ethical analysis of corporate political actions, then applies it to a case study of the phenomenon, and (...) finally, makes some policy suggestions to the government for regulating the practice of private entrepreneurs' involvement in politics. (shrink)

As we all know, metaphysics and objective truth are basically antagonistic, while dialectical materialism and objective truth are uniform. This is the common sense of Marxist philosophy and needs no argument. What, then, is the relationship between formal logic as a science and objective truth? This involves the problem of the correctness of thought form and the truthfulness of thought content. As shown, this problem is still an unsettled dispute in philosophy and logic circles. There are two opposite views: one (...) view holds that formal logic should concern itself with the correctness of thought form and the truthfulness of thought content; the other holds that formal logic should concern itself only with the correctness of thought form, but not the truthfulness of thought content. The substance of the issue involves the problem of the relationship between formal logic and objective truth. We consider that the science of formal logic itself does not and cannot assume the task of solving objective truth, since it is basically distinguished from the philosophy of dialectical materialism. However, formal logic does not exclude objective truth. It differs basically from metaphysics in that formal logic is a science. Thus, there is no inherent and necessary link between formal logic and objective truth. Formal logic does not study the problem of objective truth. (shrink)

Science, the proud son of the era and the crystallization of man's wisdom, is inlaid in the crown of our times like a lustrous and brilliant pearl. Social science discloses to mankind the general law governing the development of society and leads it in marching forward to the higher stages of social system - socialist society and communist society. Natural science creates for mankind tremendous productive forces like miracles, enabling the human race to live a life in fairyland. Who is (...) there who does not praise the power of science and refuses to admit that science is the great force pushing history forward? Who is there that dares openly to set up forbidden zones in science, thus serving as an executioner to strangle science? In our times, people who dare openly to do this, perhaps, are increasingly few. However, this does not mean that science can completely extricate itself from disaster. Science has to pay dearly for every step of exploration and has to undergo a stern struggle for it. Science is an undertaking that is most creative and filled with the spirit of innovation. It openly declares that it will wage an irreconcilable struggle against all the old stuff which is reactionary, dark, ignorant and superstitious. Because of this, it is bound to suffer bans and buffets from the reactionary forces. Science has no forbidden zone! This is a call of reason; but there are forbidden zones in science, and that is what we see in the picture of history and reality. What are the forbidden zones? And how should we destroy the forbidden zones and set science free? For many years Lin Biao and the "gang of four" brought terrible disasters to science. In consequence, the aforementioned question is sharply raised before us, requiring us to deal with it strictly and try to resolve it correctly. (shrink)

The neural basis of mental imagery has been investigated by localizing the underlying neural networks, mostly in motor and perceptual systems, separately. However, how modality-specific representations are top-down induced and how the action and perception systems interact in the context of mental imagery is not well understood. Imagined speech production (‘articulation imagery’), which induces the kinesthetic feeling of articulator movement and its auditory consequences, provides a new angle because of the concurrent involvement of motor and perceptual systems. On the basis (...) of previous findings in mental imagery of speech, we argue for the following regarding the induction mechanisms of mental imagery and the interaction between motor and perceptual systems: (1) Two distinct top-down mechanisms, memory retrieval and motor simulation, exist to induce estimation in perceptual systems. (2) Motor simulation is sufficient to internally induce the representation of perceptual changes that would be caused by actual movement (perceptual associations); however, this simulation process only has modulatory effects on the perception of external stimuli, which critically depends on context and task demands. Considering the proposed simulation-estimation processes as common mechanisms for interaction between motor and perceptual systems, we outline how mental imagery (of speech) relates to perception and production, and how these hypothesized mechanisms might underpin certain neural disorders. (shrink)

The study of the Chinese feminism rose in 1980s. Its theoretical premise is that Chinese woman has divided into different groups and has gotten the uneven development, caused by the command economic system into the market economic system. By this premise, the given questions of Chinese feminism only accordwith the given woman groups, namely, each woman group has its own problems. All of the problems have shown that the key question in the study of the Chinese feminism is why the (...) unequal between sexes occurs in such a society of the equal between sexes in law as China. This paper will analyze this question through three aspects: (1) study the present condition of the Chinese woman groups and the cause for the occurrence; (2) analyze the causes that the unequal between sexes occur in china; (3) rethink the practice and theory of the Chinese woman movement. (shrink)

Ideology has been a most prominent problem in today’s China ever since the establishment of the overall socialist market economy in China in the 1990s. What kind of ideology is in need for Chinese market economy? The question directly challenges Marxism, the leading ideology. Liberalism，New-Confucianism split and contradicted socialism and market economy, denied Marxist ideology and required the adoption of western Liberalism or traditional Confucianism as the leading ideology for today’s China. Whereas the Marxists insisted on socialist market economy, but (...) had not founded the new theory of ideology suitable for thedevelopment of today’s China to criticize Liberalism and Neo-Confucianism. All these study caused the complicated situation of ideology. I think that the Chinese market economy challenges the former Marxist philosophy while at the same time becomes the moment that develops Marxist philosophy and recreates. This challenge shows the internal contradiction in the Chinese social structure, therefore, indicates that China is now experiencing a culture revolution in the micro world. Owing to this revolution, ideology is no longer the abstract knowledge suspended over the foundation, but a self-creation movement penetrating into thedaily life. Therefore, the creation of the Chinese ideology is not something clinging to the surface of the market economic construction but an internal part of it, the significant aspect leading the healthy development of the Chinese market economy. (shrink)

The history of Chinese Marxist thought is intimately intertwined with ancient autochthonous philosophical texts. In Chinese Dialectics the complete intellectual history of Chinese Marxism is laid bare.

Functional data analysis (FDA) considers the continuity of the curves or functions, and is a topic of increasing interest in the statistics community. FDA is commonly applied to time-series and spatial-series studies. The development of functional brain imaging techniques in recent years made it possible to study the relationship between brain and mind over time. Consequently, an enormous amount of functional data is collected and needs to be analyzed. Functional techniques designed for these data are in strong demand. This paper (...) discusses three statistically challenging problems utilizing FDA techniques in functional brain imaging analysis. These problems are dimension reduction (or feature extraction), spatial classification in fMRI studies, and the inverse problem in MEG studies. The application of FDA to these issues is relatively new but has been shown to be considerably effective. Future efforts can further explore the potential of FDA in functional brain imaging studies. (shrink)

The present study tested the hypothesis that the effects of mental imagery on subsequent perception occur at a later matching stage in perceptual identification, but not in the early perceptual stage as in perceptual detection. The behavioral results suggested that the effect of visual imagery on visual identification is content-specific, i.e., imagining a congruent face facilitates face identification, whereas a mismatch between imagery and perception leads to an interference effect. More importantly, the ERP results revealed that a more negative N2 (...) response to the subsequent visual face stimuli was elicited over fronto-central sites in the mismatch and no-imagery conditions as compared to that in the match condition, with the early P1 and N170 components independent of manipulations. The latency and distribution of the neural effects demonstrate that the matching step, but not the earlier perceptual process, is affected by the preceding visual imagery in the context of face identification. We discuss these results in a broader context that the imagery-perception interaction may depend on task demand. (shrink)

It is perhaps too early in the long history of humanity to draw definitive conclusions concerning the historical trajectories of traditional socialist countries. It is well known that major changes have been occurring in these countries, with most even turning away from socialism altogether. Many explanations have been propounded for this phenomenon. Some observers explain the turn away fromsocialism as a result of the backward stage of the development of productive forces. Everyone knows that most socialist countries were set up (...) during times of poor economic conditions. Certainly, it is difficult to say how advanced the productive forces need to be in order to set up a durable and practical socialist system. In discussing the problem, I will be re-examining the practice of so-called traditionalsocialism in concentrating mostly on China, a country which has been and still is guided by its understanding of Marx’s theory of historical materialism. (shrink)

The position of individuals' bodies (e.g., holding a pencil in the mouth in a way that either facilitates or inhibits smiling musculature) can influence their emotional reactions to the stimuli they encounter, and can even impact their explicit preferences for one item over another. In this article we begin by reviewing the literature demonstrating these effects, explore mechanisms to explain this body-preference link, and introduce new work from our lab that asks whether one's bodily or motor experiences might also shape (...) preferences in situations where the body is not contorted in a particular position, or when there is no intention to act. Such work suggests that one consequence of perceiving an object is the automatic and covert motor simulation of acting on this object. This, in turn, provides individuals with information about how easy or hard this action would be. It transpires that we like to do what is easy, and we also prefer objects that are easier to act on. The notion that judgments of object likeability are driven by motoric information furthers embodied cognition theories by demonstrating that even our preferences are grounded in action. (shrink)

The problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the fundamental problem of Marxism. Throughout the socialist historical phase, whether or not we can from beginning to end uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat is a matter of the greatest importance for the future development of China. The emphasis of our great teacher and leader Chairman Mao on clarification of the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of combating and preventing revisionism, strengthening the dictatorship of the (...) proletariat, and preventing and stopping any capitalist restoration is invested with increasingly important practical significance and a profound historical significance. (shrink)

Although the ethical aspects of transformational leadership have attracted considerable attention, very little is known about followers’ reactions to the moral and immoral conduct of transformational leaders. Against this background, this study examined whether and how transformational leadership interacts with moral and authoritarian leadership behaviors in predicting followers’ in-role and extra-role efforts. Building on attribution theory, we hypothesized that the positive and negative effects of these leadership behaviors would be particularly pronounced for highly transformational leaders given that this leadership style (...) elicits strong attention and sense-making efforts among followers. We tested our model in a sample of 228 individuals comprising 114 leader–follower dyads from a wide range of organizations and industries. In line with our hypotheses, results revealed that for highly transformational leaders, moral leadership behaviors related positively to employees’ in-role and extra-role efforts whereas authoritarian leadership behaviors related negatively to employees’ in-role and extra-role efforts. In contrast, moral and authoritarian leadership behaviors did not significantly affect followers’ reactions to leaders low in transformational leadership. Taken together, these findings suggest that transformational leadership, contrary to its largely positive perception in the literature, can be a rather mixed blessing. Implications for theory, future research, and managerial practice are discussed. (shrink)